hair white as wool, at another with the lower part of his body like gilt brass,4 at
378 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis produced through some bodily creature, like the one from the cloud, This is my Son (Mk 9:7)?
So which precisely of these it was that actually happened we may not be capable of grasping clearly; but at least let us hold as absolutely certain both that God did say this, and that even if he said it with a bodily voice uttered in time in some bodily likeness, it was not through his own very substance that he said it, but through some creature subject to his command, as we discussed the matter in the previous book.3
4. God, you see, also appeared later on to holy men, at one time with a head of hair white as wool, at another with the lower part of his body like gilt brass,4 at others like this or like that. But for all that, he did not grant those visions to men in the substance which he is in himself, but showed what he wished and spoke by means of things subject to him which he created, and in the likenesses of bodily forms and voices. About this there is complete certainty for those who either faith fully believe, or exceptionally understand, that the substance of the Trinity being unchangeably eternal, it is not moved through successive times and places, and yet causes movement through times and through places. So then, let us not still go on asking how God said this, but rather let us try to understand what it is he said. That a help indeed for the man that was suited to him was to be made is there in eternal Truth herself, through whom all things were created. And it is in her that those hear this who are able to perceive in her why anything was created.
lt was onlyfor the procreation ofchildren that the man needed the woman 's help
3, 5. lfthe question is asked, though, for what purpose it was necessary for this help to be made, no more likely answer suggests itself than that it was for the sake ofprocreating children—in the same sort of way as the earth is a help to the seed, so that the plant may be born of each of them. This, after all, is what was said at the first establishment ofthings: Male andfemale he made them, and God blessed them, saying: lncrease and multiply andfill the earth and lord it over it (Gn 1:27-28). This reason for the setting up and joining together of male and female and this blessing did not fall away after the man's sin and punishment; it is in terms of it, after all, that the earth is now full of men and women and being lorded over by them.
6. Although, you see, it was when they had been turned out of Paradise that they are reported to have come together and brought forth, I still cannot see what could have prevented their also being wedded with honor and bedded without
3. See Book VH1.27.49-50. He is not in fact going to rehash the whole subject again, as he will say himself at the end of this chapter and section 4. 4. See Rv 1:14-15, which is quoting respectively Dn 7:9 and Ez 1 :27, somewhat modified.